Somatic therapy in Brisbane for nervous system healing and trauma recovery.

Book your Somatic therapy appointment with us here.

If your body has been under stress for months or even years, then you know that no amount of “relaxation” will help you to feel any better. Somatic psychotherapy aims at addressing the problem of chronic stress and unresolved trauma in your body by applying certain techniques that will help to release the tension. At The Shift Clinic in Brisbane, we offer somatic trauma therapy combined with naturopathy, hypnotherapy, kinesiology, functional breathing and remedial massage, allowing you to heal physically, mentally and spiritually.

Are you interested in exploring the power of your body? Get in touch today and schedule a Discovery and Diagnosis session.

When your body is stuck in survival mode

The results of your blood tests are normal and nothing seems to be structurally wrong according to your GP. Yet, your body always seems prepared for an imminent threat. This is a sign that your nervous system is stuck in a fight, flight, freeze or fawn state, from which it doesn’t know how to get out.

The nervous system, once conditioned by the trauma, becomes unable to tell the difference between the actual event of threat and the memories of it. Any minor stressor (even receiving an email), will elicit a release of the same adrenaline and cortisol hormones that you originally experienced during the threatening situation.

Physical symptoms of a dysregulated nervous system

Nervous system dysregulation almost never manifests itself in ways that are expected. The manifestations are physical in nature and usually chronic, unexplained, and seemingly unconnected to one another.

Some of the possible symptoms that may manifest include pain and/or tension anywhere in your body that keeps moving around, and jaw and shoulder tension that nothing seems to help relax. Common symptoms are digestive problems such as bloating and nausea, or other IBS-type symptoms. Fatigue and an inability to overcome it through sleep are also common. You may also suffer from heart palpitations and breathlessness, or “wired and tired”, where your body is tired, but you cannot shut your brain down.

Skin breakouts, hormonal imbalances, weak immunity, lack of sleep and sensitivities to sound and light can all result from your body operating on protection mode, instead of healing mode.

Why chronic stress and unresolved trauma show up in the body

The nervous system does not handle trauma in the same manner as the conscious mind. While you may have processed a distressing situation and come to terms with it, your body may not have yet released the trauma.

This is due to the body’s stress response that is triggered by trauma and held within the body’s muscles and fascial system when the stress response is not released. Consider the example of an animal surviving an encounter with a predator and shaking off the stress response once the situation ends. It is an animal’s natural instinct to release any residual stress from the experience. Unfortunately, humans do not allow themselves to release stress due to social norms and their ability to override their impulses.

The same principle applies to chronic stress. When the body is continuously exposed to high levels of stress hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline, there will be changes in how your nervous system regulates itself. Your nervous system gets used to a state of high alertness and starts to regard it as your new baseline. This leaves your body unaware of what relaxation truly feels like, leading to a constant state of sympathetic dominance.

How somatic therapy works at The Shift Clinic

At The Shift Clinic, somatic therapy focuses on the body rather than the mind when it comes to overcoming trauma. Instead of talking about the events that happened, somatic therapy focuses on how those events are affecting you physically at the current moment; what is tight, what is numb, how you’re breathing, and what your physical reactions are to specific memories. The body holds emotions caused by life events, past experiences and traumatic experiences. We create a safe space for you to work through this in your own pace.

The difference between somatic therapy and other forms of counselling therapy is that instead of using traditional talk therapy, the physical aspects of the problem (bodily tension, breathing, and posture) are used to complete the physical response that was started by the event and help your body to recognise that the threat is no longer present.

Mind-body techniques we use to release stored trauma

The Shift Clinic uses a range of body-based techniques, depending on what stage you are in on your journey of healing. These techniques aren’t mere relaxation techniques, but clinical interventions aimed at stimulating your nervous system at levels that cognitive methods simply cannot achieve.

One of the techniques used in the clinic that directly impacts your nervous system state is Functional Breathing. In these sessions our practitioner educates you on how to use your breath for you, rather than against you by simply reeducating what good, healthy breathing actually is. Using techniques from the Buteyko Breathing Method, it involves addressing the dysfunctional breathing patterns that have formed over time and often attributing to symptoms and heightened levels of fight or flight.

Body awareness exercises assist you in developing the skill of sensing what is going on inside your body without being flooded by sensations. Interoception is the term used to describe this process, and it is essential for self-regulation. People who have gone through traumatic events find themselves either highly sensitive to all physical sensations (seeing danger in each and every one) or completely out of touch with their bodies. Both types can benefit from guidance in their somatic practice.

Additionally, we incorporate soft movements and self-touching along with grounding techniques that allow the release of built-up tension in your body. These exercises are done in your own time and comfort zone. Nothing is forced here.

What a somatic therapy session feels like

If talk therapy is all you have known so far, a somatic experience will be something quite different right from the beginning. You will find yourself spending less time discussing your past and focusing more on what happens within your body as you talk.

Your therapist may invite you to feel the areas in your body that feel tight, warm, heavy, or numb. Your therapist may also encourage you to breathe in a specific way or rest your hand on one particular area of your body. The work may include some gentle movement, or it may simply involve feeling sensations in your body without doing anything else.

Feeling emotions is common during the session. Some people cry, while others experience exhaustion or relief immediately, or do not feel much initially but observe some change in the hours or days following the session. For example, better sleep or reduced reactivity and less tension in one particular area of their bodies. Everyone responds differently to a somatic experience, but your practitioner will work with whatever comes up, at whatever pace feels safe for you. Just a few sessions can help your mental health through this emotionally focused therapy.

Why somatic therapy goes further than talk therapy alone

Talk therapy is a great thing. Not only does it provide an opportunity to understand your patterns and process experiences, but it also gives you tools for how to deal with future emotional challenges through cognitive techniques.

However, talk therapy does not necessarily heal the symptoms that live within a patient’s body. This is due to the fact that the brain regions that are responsible for the trauma response, such as the brainstem and the limbic system, do not process information the way the prefrontal cortex does. A person may have an intellectual understanding of how they should behave in a certain situation, but their actions will not match the understanding because of the disconnect between the two brain systems. This is when somatic therapy comes to help.

Somatic therapy starts with the body and then moves up toward the brain. While talk therapy tries to use rationality to control emotions, somatic therapy helps one’s nervous system develop the skills needed to bring about a state of calmness in the physical form. The effects of somatic therapy are usually felt rather than intellectualised. Patients who receive somatic treatment usually note that they feel rather than know that they are safe.

This does not necessarily mean that you need to opt for one or the other. Many of our patients practice together with their psychologist or counsellor, and take somatic therapy sessions here at The Shift Clinic as an addition to the missing body-oriented side.

How our multi-practitioner model accelerates nervous system healing

One of the unique aspects of The Shift Clinic is that somatic therapy doesn’t happen in isolation. When your nervous system is dysregulated, it affects all your bodily systems, including the endocrine, digestive, immune, and sleep systems, among others. Simply focusing on the nervous system won’t give you an entire understanding of your issue.

At The Shift Clinic, you have a team of practitioners working together for you. Each week, there’s a meeting that lasts for two hours to discuss each individual case. During this time, we work through the patients’ files, coordinating treatments so that each subsequent session can build on what has already been established in the last.

Naturopathy and somatic therapy working together

While somatic therapy works directly with your nervous system, naturopathy works with your biochemistry, which impacts your ability to regulate your nervous system.

For instance, stress causes depletion of magnesium, zinc, and B vitamins. You can’t regulate your nervous system effectively if your body lacks these nutrients, regardless of the amount of somatic therapy you engage in. Your naturopath will test and identify the nutrients, correct any deficiencies using herbal medicine and supplements, and help restore any imbalances caused by the deficiency, such as digestive issues and hormonal imbalance.

If you integrate somatic therapy, which recalibrates your nervous system, with naturopathy, healing will be faster. Somatic therapy stops the nervous system from firing unnecessary stress responses. Naturopathy replenishes your body with what is required to heal.

Adding hypnotherapy, kinesiology, functional breathing or remedial massage to your somatic work

Depending on your case, your treatment plan might involve other therapies to supplement the somatic therapy that you are receiving.

If you have suffered from any sort of trauma, hypnotherapy would prove to be very helpful, as sometimes certain behaviours tend to develop in the subconscious mind that may persist even when a person becomes consciously aware of the problem.

Kinesiology utilises the feedback mechanisms in your body to detect blockages and imbalances which may be undetected in a pathology test. For some people, doing a kinesiology session will bring forth the correlations between an emotional issue and physical ailments.

The muscle tightness and fascial restrictions that result from prolonged stress and trauma can be released using remedial massage and craniosacral therapy. Your hips being tight and having a clenched jaw is not an issue of poor posture. It is the armour that your body has constructed to defend itself. Working to release that tension through skilled bodywork can help improve nervous system regulation.

And of course working with encouraging better everyday breathing habits that signal safety to the brain by retraining your everyday breath cycle to be lighter, softer, slower and calmer is a fantastic complimentary modality to somatic therapy.

Your practitioner team will make recommendations depending on your particular requirements.

Conditions and experiences we support with somatic therapy

Childhood trauma and developmental trauma

Your early experiences influence the way the nervous system functions in adulthood. Should you be raised in conditions that were chaotic or emotionally neglectful, your nervous system will develop an ability to constantly be vigilant. This response mechanism was necessary and useful then. In the future, it might manifest itself through distrust issues, anxiety, a need to please others, dissociation, or an inner belief that something isn’t quite right about you, even though there are no visible reasons for this conviction.

Trauma acquired during your developmental years responds well to somatic techniques because it happened before you learned the language to express it. It lives in your body and a narrative alone cannot reach it.

Chronic pain, fatigue, and unexplained physical symptoms

If each and every test returns as normal yet something still feels “off” about your body, then the problem lies within your nervous system and not in the organs that are being tested.

Chronic pain and fatigue are the most common symptoms associated with a nervous system stuck in protection mode. If the body is working hard to stay alive, then there is no time left for self-healing and repair. Chronic pain and fatigue are very much a reality. They may also be an indication of underlying stress or trauma that needs to be resolved at the nervous system level.

Anxiety, panic attacks, and emotional overwhelm

When you cannot deal with anxiety using breathing apps or cognitive exercises and even medication, you should remember that anxiety is produced by your nervous system, not your mind. There is nothing you can reason with when you have anxiety, as no amount of rationalising can override that signal.

Somatic treatment helps people deal with nervous system states that cause anxiety. Using your consciousness about your body and breath control alongside moving your body gently, you learn to spot activation and manage it before you suffer from a full-fledged panic attack. Eventually, you shift your state and spend more time being regulated while feeling less anxious.

Feeling disconnected, numb, or stuck in old patterns

Disconnection from your body and emotions is a survival strategy employed by the nervous system rather than a personality flaw. If your nervous system feels too overwhelmed, it goes into survival mode by shutting down. The shutdown can be experienced as a lack of emotions, mental fuzziness, detachment from life events, or an inability to get out of destructive patterns that you are consciously aware of.

Through somatic therapy, you slowly build your ability to reconnect with yourself. Your goal in this therapy is to increase body awareness and build up tolerance within the nervous system to sensations and emotions. This involves slowly bringing back to consciousness aspects of your experience that had previously been shut down.

What makes somatic therapy at a naturopathic clinic different from seeing a psychotherapist

It would be fair to say that most somatic therapists in Brisbane fall into the categories of psychotherapists and psychologists, who use body-based therapies as part of their practice. This is a legitimate way of proceeding, but it is still a psychological approach to treatment.

As a Naturopathic and Integrative Health Clinic, The Shift Clinic takes a holistic view when it comes to somatic therapy. This includes taking into consideration all the physiological aspects that affect your state of nervousness: your nutritional state, gut health, hormones, and even sleep. If your nervous system becomes unbalanced as a consequence of some nutritional imbalance, poor gut health, or hormones going out of balance, the results from your somatic therapy won’t go far.

We take into account both approaches. The somatic component will balance your nervous system. The naturopathic component will make sure that your body chemistry backs up this process. And since our therapists coordinate your treatment in weekly case reviews, there is no way for anything to slip between the cracks.

This combined approach is especially good for people who present a more complicated case: individuals who struggle with trauma while also experiencing chronic illnesses, autoimmune disorders, hormonal imbalance, or fatigue. If you have multiple body systems affected by your condition, then a multidisciplinary team can do wonders for you.

We are trauma informed and successful therapy depends on our somatic psychotherapist being able to hold space for you to heal. Taking a trauma informed approach avoids emotional distress that that can feel overwhelming when you’re not held properly through this process.

Our somatic therapy treatment process

Your journey at The Shift Clinic will begin with our Discovery & Diagnosis appointment. It’s a 90-minute session that uses naturopathic medicine principles to assess you comprehensively by taking your health history, looking at any pathology that may already be present, and making the initial connections between your physical symptoms and emotional well-being, and how they link to your nervous system state.

From there, your practitioner will prescribe a customised treatment plan for you. Somatic treatment is normally carried out in phases. The initial stage centres on ensuring that you are in a safe place and have been stabilised so that you can develop skills to be aware of your body and regulate yourself before diving into trauma recovery. The next step involves tackling the stored trauma, using methods involving the body to enable your nervous system to complete its incomplete stress response reactions.

Your practitioner team will adjust the pace and approach based on how your body responds. There is no rigid timeline. Some people notice significant shifts within a few sessions. For others, particularly those with complex trauma or long-standing nervous system dysregulation, the process takes longer.

What to expect from your first somatic therapy session at our Brisbane clinic

The Shift Clinic can be found in Suite 17, 46 Douglas Street, Milton. Once you arrive, you will be greeted by the reception staff and settled into our welcoming environment. The clinic is a relaxed place created for those who have felt that others are always trying to rush them in the past.

Your first visit is called Discovery and Diagnosis with our Naturopathic team, which takes approximately 90 minutes of time spent with the practitioner. During this time, you will go over your medical history, as well as your goals for this experience. You will also start an assessment of your nervous system patterns, including breathing and posture, and how your body responds to talking about certain issues. By the end of the visit, you will clearly understand the state of your health and its possible reasons, as well as the next steps to take. You will also get a personalised prescription for naturopathic support if necessary.

Somatic Therapy Brisbane Pricing

Your initial embodied healing appointment is $220 and is 75 minutes long.

Book your Somatic therapy appointment with us here.

What our clients say...

Book your Somatic therapy appointment with us here.

Our expert team

Katherine Maslen

Founder

Katherine is a Bachelor qualified naturopath and western herbalist with over 14 years of experience. She is the founder and director of The Shift Clinic Brisbane and the principal naturopath. Katherine’s passion lies in educating patients about their health.

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Bronte Hamnett

Naturopath

Bronte is a Bachelor qualified Naturopath that is passionate about supporting individuals from all walks of life with the utmost of care. She believes that everyone deserves to have health autonomy and be provided with the education and support required to improve their quality of life.

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Roshelle Colegrove

Naturopath

Roshelle is a naturopath that focuses on the latest evidence and will look at ordering you any tests you need to fill in any blanks that could be holding you back. You can see her in our Brisbane clinic, or online from anywhere in the world.

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Rachel Campbell

Naturopath

Rachel’s intention is simple. To help you understand your body, trust its signals and feel confident in your path forward.

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Jenine Ingram

Clinical Hypnotherapist & Psychotherapist

Jenine Ingram is a Clinical Hypnotherapist, Psychotherapist, and master energy healer with over 14 years of experience in the healthcare field. She’s a professional member of the Australian Hypnotherapists Association, […]

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Rae Graham

Nutrition and Lifestyle Coach & Senior Client Care Administrator

Rae is a Nutritional Scientist and Lifestyle Coach with a focus on evidence-based approaches that support long-term health optimisation and wellness recovery. She holds a Bachelor of Health Science in […]

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Book a somatic therapy appointment at our Brisbane clinic

If your body has been holding onto stress or trauma for a prolonged period of time, then hoping that it will go away on its own is not a method for dealing with it. The Shift Clinic’s team can assist you in determining what your nervous system requires and formulating an approach that tackles the underlying factors causing your symptoms at their source.

Book your initial appointment today. Call 07 3367 0337 or book online. Virtual appointments are also available if you are outside Brisbane.

FAQs.

How long does somatic therapy take to work?

This depends on what you are working on. In some cases, you may notice a change in your body within a couple of sessions, especially if your problem is acute stress or anxiety. More severe issues, such as complex trauma or prolonged dysregulation, will probably need a more extended period of time, around four to six months of continuous treatment.

Can somatic therapy help if I have been through narcissistic abuse or emotional abuse?

Yes. These types of abuse tend to leave their mark on the nervous system despite the absence of physical trauma. Symptoms such as hypervigilance, people pleasing, struggles with setting boundaries, and a lack of safety are prevalent. Somatic therapy can assist your nervous system in realising that these behaviours are no longer required and allow you to regain your sense of safety.

Do I need a referral or mental health care plan for somatic therapy?

No, a referral from your general practitioner is not required for you to undergo somatic therapy treatment at The Shift Clinic. Should you be under any type of care plan or working with a psychologist, our therapists will be glad to collaborate with your existing team.

Is somatic therapy safe if I am already seeing a GP or psychologist?

Yes. Somatic therapy is meant to support traditional medicine, and we often have patients who attend the clinic as well as visit a general practitioner or psychologist. We would be happy to coordinate your other healthcare professionals.

Can I do somatic therapy online or do I need to come to the Brisbane clinic?

Somatic therapy is available in either online or in-person consultations at The Shift Clinic. While certain body-based therapies are done better in person, there are several elements of somatic therapy that can be performed through video conferencing. This is particularly helpful for people who live in rural locations or are from other states. Contact us now on 07 3367 0337.

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